Adopters, Blogging and Privacy for Adoptees

There are many adopters who are blogging about their adopted child.  THIS MUST END NOW!

 
Looming hot issue concerning "privacy" for minor adoptees

By Trace L. Hentz (Blogger- Adoptee) (repost from 2014)

I am an adoptee, well past the age of majority, and because of my closed adoption, I had to climb a mountain and claw my way up to discover any details about who my natural family was. Records were sealed in Wisconsin. Growing up, I had no medical history. I did not share my adoptive parents blood or ancestry. Mine, on paper, didn't exist.

Even recently I told a surgeon I am not sure about most of my birthmom Helen's medical history, though I do know she died from complications of diabetes.

I have not stopped thinking about the post I wrote on the LOST DAUGHTERS BLOG that APs need to stop blogging about adoptees. This is a looming hot issue concerning "privacy" for minor adoptees. At the MIT adoption conference, I heard it loud and clear.  I'm sure many adoptive parents had not considered the ramifications of blogging about their children's lives, especially when adoptees are still minors. The dangers of sharing on social media and blogs are REAL yet being ignored.

APs are, in my opinion, in essence creating an "unsafe environment" for their child.* 

A toddler cannot consent to having his or her life experiences documented on public spaces. (I predict some day some clever lawyer will take this on and attempt to sue an adoptive parent for publicizing and publishing an adoptee's early private experiences, albeit from the APs perspective.) (There might already be stalkings and kidnappings due to the increased use of social media. You can find anyone with the click of a mouse.) (There was already one lawyer in CA suing adoption agencies for damaged goods - when an adoptee is ungrateful or not what the APs expected. This is what lawyers do!)

If someone must blog, then private password-protected blogs, shared between family members, is the only way to protect any child. Parenting blogs are one thing; blogging about the children you adopt is another.


Many adoptees have told me and related on social media, much needs to be changed about "adoption" - ending the lack of access to our own adoption files, having a copy of our real birth certificate, knowing our ancestry, our medical history and so much more....including an understanding of birth trauma, anxiety and stress disorders in adoptees.

My goal as a writer/adoption author/adoptee is to advocate for adoptees too young to advocate for themselves. I will do whatever it takes to make this issue understood from the adoptee perspective. (Add to this I taught blogging and a course on social media.)

In my foster care training in Oregon back in the 1990s, there was no mention of protecting a minor child's privacy but people were not blogging and tweeting and Facebooking back then!

Yet there was plenty to read about confidentiality for birthmoms - if they chose not to tell anyone and gave a baby up for adoption - adoption agencies like Catholic Charities assured them no one would ever have to find out. The child (like me) would have a new identity and the records were sealed permanently.

This created a fantasy I had to deal with and live with as an adult. Until I met my dad Earl, I had no medical history or ancestry.

So much needs to change about adoption. It's a complicated mess. For 10+ years, I've done research on adoption as a topic. I am not a lawyer. More and more is coming to light that "adoption" is not at all what we thought.  Much of what we read is/was created by the billion dollar adoption industry so it's their sale pitch, aka propaganda for adoptive parents (APs) and potential APs.

I am old enough now to advocate for those adoptees who can't.  And I will.

If I run into APs and lawyers who get upset with me (or my blog) for voicing my opinion, get in line.


**************************************************************

Here is a very revealing post from Jason on his blog concerning failed adoptions and the practice of advertising adopted children you no longer want: REHOMING:

Children For Sale: Get 'Em While They're Hot

His post

This comment by Jason Mihalko October 24, 2014 at 10:31 AM

Hi Anonymous, Thanks for taking the time to comment. You've raised an important issue: every child should have a safe and supportive home. Do you advocate that only adoptive children who are in homes with parents unable or unprepared to raise a child be taken away? Should parents of biological children who are unprepared, unwilling, or unable to raise their children be allowed to offer up their children to better homes?

As we consider posting pictures or information about the lives of children on the internet, we must also consider the impact on the children (you are considering only the needs of potential adoptive parents). Does the internet have a right or need to know any information about these children? How might the children be impacted in the future with their personal and private information being shared with any stranger that comes across it?

What baffles me--and endangers children--is when adults think of their needs and fail to reflect on what children need. In this case their is an enormous impact that you are failing to consider.

and:  Hi Anonymous, you've raised some important concerns about the foster care system, which is a different issue than what this post is about. I'm deeply concerned about what happens when the private and personal information about children is shared publicly. Children can have safe, secure, and supportive homes without their backgrounds being put up on the internet and shared with the world

I will end with Von's comment on Adoptive Parents blogging about adoptees: The full exposure some adopters give to adoptees is seriously wrong and abusive. Some of you might remember the 'Potty Wars' and the 'Slant Eyes Fiasco' when adoptive mothers were adamant that their right to write whatever they wanted trumped the rights of children. Many claim they are not racist or abusive and that adult adoptees are over-sensitive and need to get a life, be prayed for or learn to be grateful. They pretend to pity us for our sad lives and state that their adoptees do not suffer and will not as we have. They know so little of the trauma of adoption and do so little to protect those they have adopted from further trauma. Anything posted is forever available and will undoubtedly be used by someone somewhere to bully, castigate, abuse etc because that sadly is the down side of our social media. Anyone who overlooks this is either naïve, stupid or deliberately abusive.

10 years already? How has my adoption perception changed? Did we flip the script? #NAAM2017

POSTED in 2014 - UPDATED in 2021 for National Adoption Awareness Month (NAAM)

Trace (adoptee) and her Ojibwe friend Desi in high school

By Trace Hentz (formerly DeMeyer)

If you had asked me in 2004 what I had planned for myself, I would have not said “writing” about adoption and child trafficking. I had just left my editor’s job at the Pequot Times in Connecticut in August and by September I was married, my second time. How life changed so dramatically for me is documented in my memoir in much greater detail.

First off, I am not a leader of adoptees/Lost Birds/SplitFeathers. I am an adoptee, a storyteller who happens to be a journalist.

Second, I do help adoptees (Native and non-Native) connect with one another. There are plenty of adoptees with leadership skills, like my friend Levi EagleFeather and Sandy WhiteHawk, both are Lakota. If adoptees need ceremony, they are the people to approach. I am a bridge and can help you reach them.

Third, I am an adoptee myself so I know what I went through. And I write about it in great detail but that doesn't make me an expert. I do feel like I have an advanced degree in adoption after 10+ years of reading and writing on this topic.

Now it doesn’t seem possible that 10 13 years zoomed by so fast – it’s like a time tornado hit.  I didn't have any idea my skills would be put to use in this way. I am humbled and deeply grateful to Wakan Tanka.

Since I started American Indian Adoptees, now I know many bloggers on adoption (and many are good friends to me). We had hoped we’d made a strong and lasting impact by now.  We knew:

The adoptee voice was missing. 

Chapters of history were blank. The change I worked for: giving voice to adoptees and writing that chapter, and I did what I could. There are four books in the Lost Children Book Series. A new second edition of TWO WORLDS is coming out soon - updated!

Changing adoption? I had that dream myself.  I am not sure we can actually gauge or measure how worldviews of adoption have changed. States still have adoption files sealed tight. Are they hiding something? Are they afraid of a massive uprising of adoptees? (There are an estimated 7 million of us, maybe more!) Are they afraid we'll find out adoption agencies and churches were trafficking in children? For a profit?

The governments of Canada and America have much to fear.

Other changes? If books on Amazon are an indication, adoptee memoirs are now climbing the ranks over all the propaganda books about how to adopt a baby.

If the statistics on adoption are any indication, the number of babies adopted by Americans are dropping each and every year. There is definitely a demand for infants (primarily because of infertility) but there is still a short supply of newborn flesh to adopt.  (I do believe the adoption traffickers are constantly reinventing new ways to grab a fresh supply of infants. Think of what new poor countries or communities they will invade as the demand increases!! Propaganda will change.)

Will there be more adoptees coming? If Indian Country is still poor, poverty-stricken and a Third World, YES!

What hasn’t changed are adoption laws, sealed adoption files or the old archaic views of promised secrecy and confidentiality for first mothers.

Haven’t we moved past shaming women for unwed pregnancies? Yes, but not enough, apparently.  Lawmakers are still being wined and dined by adoption agency lobbyists so I don’t expect to see much change in the laws – but I hope I am wrong.

What I’d hoped would change faster is the perception of adoption, that it’s not as great and wonderful for adoptees as the public was made to believe.  (In fact, vocal adoptees have changed everything in that regard.) As much as I’ve read in these past 10+ years, blogs and books changed me beyond recognition!  Many times I emailed legislators (like in New Jersey and Illinois) and offered my memoir (as a free book) hoping they would see the light and change existing adoption laws. Maybe it helped?

The big question: Open Adoption--when adoption is necessary--is also an indication that times are changing! But we have a long way to go…This is a quote I saved about open adoption:

…ignored by the adoption agencies is the reality of “open adoption.” Only 22 of fifty states in America recognize open adoption agreements, but failure of the adoptive parents to comply with the agreement is not legally enforceable by the surrendering mother.  (It is failing from many accounts I have read.)

There are many excellent writers making profound statements too.

A quote by adoptee-author-blogger Elle Cuardaigh: 

And adoption certainly is “worked.” When supply of newborns decreased in the 1970s, the adoption industry had to put a new spin on relinquishment  to stay in business. Since women could not be so easily shamed by single motherhood, they changed tactics. Potential suppliers (pregnant women) are now encouraged to “make an adoption plan.” She reads the “Dear Birthmother” letters and interviews hopeful adoptive parents. She is provided with medical care and possibly even housing.  She is promised this is her choice, and that she can have ongoing contact with her child in an open adoption. It would seem she has all the power, but she is being systematically conditioned to accept her role, her place. She doesn’t want to hurt the baby’s “real parents,” feels indebted to them, emotionally invested. She is soon convinced they are better than she is. She becomes “their birthmother.” It almost guarantees relinquishment.  READ Elle’s blog and new book THE TANGLED RED THREAD.  Or visit: http://ellecuardaigh.com

Read any and all posts at THE LIFE OF VON. (Von is now on hiatus)


Powerful WRITING!


The number of excellent powerful blogs and books and articles by adoptees and first parents (and even some APs) exploded in the past 10 years. In 2017, that is fading - far fewer than three years ago.

Helping to writing and publish four books about the Indian Adoption Projects and Programs and contributing to books like ADOPTIONLAND certainly changed me.

In 2014, #FliptheScript in November really moved people - tweets and comments were flying everywhere, some good, some not so good. Discussion is still needed and the people who need to hear adoptees out are the ones we don't reach that well: ADOPTIVE PARENTS. They have their own fog to lift.

Last but not least: I am happily shocked this blog AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES reached over 285,000 700,000 hits! If that is any indication, times really are a changin’.  Thanks to all the people who comment and read and subscribe!

There are thousands of Lost Children/Adoptees who are Native American. They are still out there. I hope they find this blog!

There are two things I hope to see for Lost Bird Adoptees: A class action lawsuit in the US on behalf of those children who were taken from their tribes because of the gov't programs (IAP and ARENA) and admitting PUBLICLY it happened with a declaration of this FACT.

I never would have guessed my life would move in the direction it did. I want to thank those brave bloggers and hundreds of adoptees who have inspired me so much over past 10+ years.


So what will the next 10 years be like? I don’t have a clue.

We Clock You from a Mile Away #NAAM2016

SOURCE

Dear wealthy, white, entitled moms of adoption: Adult adoptees see you, and some of us don’t find your words “inspirational.”


The thing is, I knew you right away. I recognize the fierce determination. The grit. The fight. Because everything about what you have was a decision, and nothing about what you have was easy. You are the kind of woman who Makes.Things.Happen. After all, you made this happen, this family you have.
Maybe you prayed for it. Maybe you had to convince a partner it was the right thing. Maybe you did it alone. Maybe people told you to just be happy with what you had before. Maybe someone told you it simply wasn’t in God’s plans for you to have a child, this child whose hair you now brush lightly from his face. Maybe someone warned you about what happened to their cousin’s neighbor’s friend. 

Maybe you ignored them.

Maybe you planned for it for years. Maybe an opportunity dropped into your lap. Maybe you depleted your life-savings for it. Maybe it was not your first choice. But maybe it was.
Regardless, I know you. And I see how you hold on so tight. Sometimes too tight. Because that’s what we do, isn’t it?

See, we recognize you from a mile away because your interactions with your child suggest you are a complete control freak – one who believes pregnancy and childbirth are a cakewalk that “just happens” to women, but that having “an opportunity dropped into” your righteous lap requires grit, fight, determination.

I know about all those books you read back then. The ones everyone reads about sleep patterns and cloth versus disposable, yes, but the extra ones, too. About dealing with attachment disorders, breast milk banks, babies born addicted to alcohol, cocaine, meth. About cognitive delays, language deficiencies. About counseling support services, tax and insurance issues, open adoption pros and cons, legal rights.

We recognize you from a mile away because it’s obvious you believe your sweet precious angel child is defective because s/he wasn’t homemade. No matter how loudly you shout that the opposite is true…we see you, and we recognize you.

I know about the fingerprinting, the background checks, the credit reports, the interviews, the references. I know about the classes, so many classes. I know the frustration of the never-ending paperwork. The hours of going over finances, of having garage sales and bake sales and whatever-it-takes sales to raise money to afford it all.

We recognize you from a mile away because some people who had to undergo one lousy home study and a background check–the kind you undergo when you want to lease an apartment or go to college–wear a look of butthurt resentment about it FOREVER. I mean… you had to CLEAN YOUR HOUSE! Who does that?!

To be fair, I don’t know anything about the “so many” adoptive parenting classes. I don’t understand why anyone would resent them, either. Don’t we all joke that children should come with instruction manuals? Well, you get one! Lucky you! Don’t we all complain from time to time that parents ought to have to pass some kind of test before they can have children? Oh wait, I get it: you meant parents who are not of your class should have to do that. You are supposed to get the benefit of the doubt.

And I know about the followup visits, when you hadn’t slept in three weeks because the baby had colic.

We recognize you because you think you’re special for being sleepless and dealing with a colicky baby. And no, most mothers don’t have “followup visits” (how many exactly?), but if they aren’t of your class, if they have the misfortune to be the wrong race or too poor or not married, mothers face constant public scrutiny and shaming. They often do face a lot of followup visits from people and agencies that don’t believe they are worthy of their own children. And they have a lot fewer resources to defend themselves against those people and agencies than you do.

And yes, you probably get asked some rude questions if your child doesn’t look like you, but for every one of those questions, you get articles like this all November and people telling you how wonderful you are all year round.

I know how you wanted so badly to show that you had it all together, even though you were back to working more-than-full-time, maybe without maternity leave, without the family and casseroles and welcome-home balloons and plants.

We recognize you because you seem to believe doing what other mothers do makes you exceptional. Plenty of non-adoptive mothers work full-time, do without maternity leave and never receive balloons and plants or the support of their families.  And seriously: Balloons soon sag or pop, and plants often don’t get cared for and are tossed out. Your suffering, I am not feeling it. (Mothers’ suffering, yes: It’s a hard world to raise a child in. Women’s suffering, yes: It’s a hard word to be female in. Your super special adoptive mommy suffering, no.)

We recognize you from a mile away by your insistence upon actual superhuman powers, like your magical ability to survive without inhaling an iota of oxygen “for months. Months.”

And I’ve seen you in foreign countries, strange lands, staying in dirty hotels, taking weeks away from work, struggling to understand what’s being promised and what’s not. Struggling to offer your love to a little one who is unsettled and afraid. Waiting, wishing, greeting, loving, flying, nesting, coming home.

We recognize you by your insistence that the luxury of being able to take weeks off work to fly overseas without going hungry or being evicted is a horrible burden.

I’ve seen you down the street at the hospital when a baby was born, trying to figure out where you belong in the scene that’s emerging. I’ve seen your face as you hear a nurse whisper to the birthmother that she doesn’t have to go through with this. I’ve seen you trying so hard to give this birthmother all of your respect and patience and compassion in those moments—while you bite your lip and close your eyes, not knowing if she will change her mind, if this has all been a dream coming to an abrupt end in a sterile environment. Not knowing if this is your time.

We recognize you because you have to force yourself to offer respect and compassion to a woman who is about to lose her child forever. We recognize you by your willingness to hurt your fellow woman in order to get what you want…and then congratulate yourselves for it.

We recognized you before we’d read a complete paragraph of this mess. Maybe we’re superhuman, too.

This was published in November 2015... and still true...

SnarkUrchin Adopto-Snark · Not amused? Fuck right off.

#adoption #Lost Daughters #NAAM #flipthescript

READ: Lost Daughters: In My Next Life

November is Native American Heritage Month and National Adoption Awareness Month (NAAM).

If you have twitter, follow this moment...


If I could fix #adoption


We'll be posting more each week...
Stay tuned... Trace



When Terrorism is Personal #BabyVeronica #FlipTheScript #NAAM2015

Guest Post

by ellecuardaigh

 

We were shocked again today, as incomprehensible violence was unleashed upon Paris. While the newscaster reported as gently as possible that we still did not know the extent of the casualties, my daughter pointed out that forty-three people in Beirut were also killed today, and wondered why that didn’t seem to matter. I said: Because we expect it in Beirut, not in Paris, but that to the people involved I’m sure it didn’t matter where they were.

I wondered about what to write today for Flip The Script on National Adoption Month, when everything else seemed to pale in comparison. If those forty-three in Beirut don’t matter, then speaking about against unethical adoption seems little more than whining.

But I thought again of what I said to my daughter – that to those involved it matters greatly. So I am writing this for them. As we (rightfully) grieve over terrorism in the city of lights, there are thousands of children in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere who have been unjustly ripped from their families, and who are living – right now – in fear. To them, Paris must seem very far away. They are experiencing their own personal terrorism, but we don’t see it.

Children who have been taken by CPS (or whatever equivalent of that you may have) are at far greater risk to suffer abuse of every kind under their “care” – physical, sexual, medical, and psychological – than with their own family. Putting children into foster care is too often the beginning of the nightmare, not the end. Considering that the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN) recently calculated that for every one truly abused child that is rescued by CPS, there are seventeen who never should have been removed at all, one might wonder why this happening.

The answer is simple: Money. Kids are a cash crop. Adoption and foster care are a huge industry. And since women and girls are not so easily shamed into relinquishing their children nowadays, the baby brokers had to think of another way to keep those little orphans coming down the pipeline.

Their jobs depend on it.

So now children are taken for these reasons:

• Poverty, or, just not having as much money as the prospective adoptive family
• Asking for a second opinion after a medical diagnosis is made regarding your child
• Being Native American
• Being short
• Considering adoption then deciding against it
• Going to the ER for any reason
• Using medical marijuana
• Being a single parent
• Disagreeing with anything a teacher or other authority figure says about your child
• Not adhering strictly to the recommended vaccine schedule
• Being exceptionally attractive
• Not putting your child into preschool
• Allowing your child to play in your own yard
• Having an unusual birthmark
• Your neighbor or some awful relative just wants to hurt you
• CPS meeting their “children in care” quotas
• And I’ll say it again, because this is the #1 reason: You don’t have the money to fight back.

Remember Veronica Brown? Kidnapper-mommy Melanie Capobianco said, when asked by a judge why she and her husband should have the child over the natural father: “We love her more.” They loved her so much, they were okay with tearing her crying and screaming from the perfectly capable family of which she was an integral part. The Supreme Court of the United States agreed. As did lower courts and the governors of two states, as well as many lesser players who earn a paycheck by the misery of others.

You may look at Veronica now, and think, “She looks fine to me. She’s not suffering.” And I certainly hope it is true that she is not being physically abused. But I am certain she is being systematically terrorized in lesser ways. Daily micro-aggressions – the little digs made about her original family, the stipend the wealthy Capobiancos collect for Veronica’s non-existent “special needs”, the primal memory of her father who loved her, of her mother who didn’t, of her sister and grandparents and countless others who are considered unworthy because she’s Matt and Melanie’s plaything now.

We compare the Capobiancos with the Browns and make judgements on which are the better parents, when that never should have been an issue. There should have been no legal battle. There should have been no contest after her father said, “I want to raise her.” That should have been the end of it. But because children are thought of things instead of people, and because the Capobiancos had the money to fight, little Veronica was awarded to them just as if she was a trophy.

We compare and judge and divide. We tear down and blame. We think it can’t happen to us, and that there must have been a reason we don’t know about when it’s our neighbor. And when the threat is thrown into our face, like it was today, we think either that it’s them, meaning “not us” as victims, or it’s them, meaning “anyone who isn’t like us” as perpetrators. The truth is, there is no us and them.

It’s all us. We are us. They are us.

Meanwhile, children are carrying another trash bag of their meager belongings to yet another foster home. They are meeting strangers who are their new parental stand-ins, wondering what they did wrong, wondering if they will be abused here like the last place, wondering if they will be separated from their siblings too, wondering if they will ever see their parents or their pets again. They are being conditioned to accept whatever happens to them, like good hostages, hoping that will win their freedom. Their native language will eventually be squelched, as will their faith, and their memories.

They are not people, they are children and therefore commodities. They are living in their own personal hell, while we reassure ourselves that at least bombs are not dropping on them.

Elle Cuardaigh is author of The Tangled Red Thread and contributor of The Adoptee Survival Guide

The Hard Journey #NAAM #FlipTheScript

By Trace Hentz, reunited adoptee, blog editor


It's November. It's Adoption Awareness Month and Native American Heritage and History Month.

Man, that's too bad. Each deserves more than a month of attention. They deserve ALL our attention.


First up, READ: Lost Daughters: The Journey of Searching. I met Jenn earlier this year at a conference in Boston. She's a gentle soul with a strong courageous spirit.  Read about her journey. I do read Lost Daughters blog, often...

NOW - it's time to THINK HARD about adoption in general.

There is something awkward about being adopted that will challenge you - one, you want to know who you are; two, you are a mystery.  The hard journey to find out who you are is (from my own experience):  intense, epic, scary, challenging, unwritten, a path with an unknown destination, a way to test your patience and courage, and it will be the hardest thing you will ever do or experience. 

It's a path full of hurdles and emotional landmines.

TRUST ME on this!  You find out that the experience is lined with people who will hate you and love you when you go searching to find your identity, your first parents, your first families. There are brick walls called sealed records you'll have to break open or jump over. Emotions and secrets will blow up - yours and theirs.

Love and Hate? Yes, both.  Some people don't want to be found. Some people won't like you. Adoptees do face this and some face the fact their parents are already gone when you're finally able to find them.

The general public has no idea what it feels like to be adopted and live your life as a mystery with a fake identity.  Every time I look at my fake birth certificate, I laugh. It's a joke. The people who are adopted me are NOT my biological parents. But this paper says they are. It's official. It's got a seal on it. It's like a "bill of sale" and a purchase agreement. I have to be this new person because these people "procured" me through adoption. I take their name and be their kid.

But I am not their kid. They don't own me.

If the general public had any idea of the fandango and farce we adoptees live with and under, then the adoption laws could change faster. The laws are changing but very slowly.  There are several years of adoption propaganda written by a billion dollar adoption industry to make money.  It's a BUSINESS! You will rub up against it when you see the words "Forever Family" --- and the public chooses sweetened propaganda: It makes it sound so good. It makes all adoption good.

The Indian Adoption Projects were cultural genocide so they won't mention it, or us, or they'll deny it ever happened in the USA.  THE STOLEN GENERATION is called that for a reason and the governments in North America are still denying the public the truth. If there are 6 million adoptees living today, MANY of them are First Nations and Native American adoptees.

If you are not adopted, take a moment to consider how adoptees are given a big lie to live with --then we're expected to be grateful to the people who want us to be something we're not?  You'd have to be crazy to think anyone can live like that!

No wonder being adopted is so emotionally destructive.

To survive, I took on adoption like a college class. I got real good at chasing ghosts. I got good, like private detective good!  Read One Small Sacrifice, my memoir.  Because I started doing research on adoption back in 2004, I decided to find out even more on orphanages, trafficking and illegal adoptions. It's a bloody battlefield of coercion and greed and scandal.

Now I am posting here as well: www.armyofone.me.  I'm also posting some of the best blogging on this adoption topic all month, so please take a read...

Like this:

We Clock You from a Mile Away by Snarkurchin

Dear wealthy, white, entitled moms of adoption: Adult adoptees see you, and some of us don't find your words "inspirational."

The thing is, I knew you right away. I recognize the fierce determination. The grit. The fight. Because everything about what you have was a decision, and nothing about what you have was easy. You are the kind of woman who Makes.Things.Happen. After all, you made this happen, this family you have.

++++++++++++++++++  ====================

So strap on your reading glasses - this is the month for ADOPTEES to #flipthescript on adoption propaganda.

OBC Access #flipthescript #adoption

New York State Adoptee Equality on Facebook

This IS Adoptee Rights:
"I look at it as a human rights issue. Why should people who, to no fault of their own, happen to be adopted, have less rights to their existence?" David Weprin said. "It's really a piece of the puzzle people should be entitled to. In this day and age, there is no reason why there should be a restriction to an adoptee having access to their original birth certificate (OBC)."

By Lara Trace

This article sums it up...

 

No Wonder Adoption Agencies are Nervous About OBC Access!

by Jo Swanson on Monday, October 25, 2010 

I was looking for a quote in my 1989 'mini-book' The Adoption Machine and came across something I had forgotten about. It fortifies what we've known all along about why agencies fight so hard to keep adoptees and birth families from locating one another. The agency is in Michigan - it's the one my daughter was placed through. I'll quote directly from the book:

A birthmother who placed her child through our same "Christian" agency contacted me for search help. She had kept in touch with her social worker throughout the years, even after the woman retired, as a way of somehow staying connected to her child. In recent visits, the former social worker had become quite upset about the birthmother's desire to be reunited with her daughter. "Give it up," she admonished her, suggesting that she was merely having a "bad day." "Cheer up! You have another family now! Besides, I checked the phone book recently, and the family isn't living in the area anymore."

Mother and daughter did meet, however, and upon comparing information provided to each by the agency at time of placement and later with the real story, found:

Claim: Birthmother was told by her social worker at time of relinquishment that her infant was perfectly normal and healthy.

Fact: Records indicated the child was diagnosed in the hospital, right after birth, as having a severe hearing impairment (95% loss), possibly due to exposure of mother, unknowingly, to German measles during pregnancy.

Claim: One year after relinquishment, birthmother was sent a letter by the agency, informing her that her child was "in a happy home" and that the adoption was finalized.

Fact: At the time the social worker wrote that letter, this child was back in foster care after a failed adoption. "The adoptive mother was having a nervous breakdown and couldn't handle a handicapped child." A second placement had been made at thirteen months, and fortunately it was a very good placement.

Claim: The adoptive family no longer lived in the area.

Fact: Adoptive father was deceased, but the mother still lived in the same home as at the time of adoption, and was still listed in phone directory. (Adoptive mother was supportive of her daughter's desire to meet her birth family.)

Claim: The adoptive couple had been told by the agency social worker after placement that the child's birthmother had died subsequent to the birth! (Common practice, we now know, as was telling birthmothers their infants died before or after birth.)

Fact: This agency social worker had spun so many lies that she was in a virtual panic that the two parties might actually meet one day and learn the truth!

++++++++++

We're getting the truth out drop by drop. But we've been doing it for so many decades - when will legislators begin to "get it" and realize how power has been abused by adoption brokers at the expense of children and their mothers?...Trace

 

The best that money can buy: #flipthescript

World Adoption Day? Really? Donate $$$? Really?

Look at this:

LINK

I warned you, the adoption industry has boatloads of money and this is what they do very well...glossy websites, tons of big-name supporters who donate to them and no where is the adult adoptee voice... because "we" are perpetual children, silent and grateful. Nowhere is any mention of poverty which is the cause of Third World poverty conditions which can create children-in-need.

World Adoption Day is today - really.

Child Trafficking, Illegal Adoptions Headlines #flipthescript

click on headlines

 

11 Facts About Human Trafficking | DoSomething.org ...

https://www.dosomething.org/.../11-facts-about-human-tra...

Do Something

 

California harbors 3 of the FBI's 13 highest child sex trafficking areas on the ... Accessed February 25, 2014, http://www.ncadv.org/files/HumanTrafficking.pdf. ⁴.

 

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Illegal adoption 'big business' in Dominica - Dominica News ...

dominicanewsonline.com/news/.../illegal-adoption-big-business-dominic...

Apr 29, 2014 - Illegal adoption of Dominican children has become a 'big business' between Dominica and the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe.

 

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Greece: 7 arrested in illegal adoption ring - WSMV Channel 4

www.wsmv.com/.../greece-7-arrested-in-illegal-adoption-ring

WSMV‑TV

Updated: Sep 24, 2014 6:58 AM PDT ... Illegal adoption in Greece typically motivated by frequent procedural delays and the country's relative affluence ...

 

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Illegal Adoption: Is It Human Trafficking?

March 2, 2014 · by Human Trafficking Indicators · in child trafficking, illegal adoptions, international law

This week, 382 babies were rescued and 1,000 people arrested in a Chinese sting operation against four illegal adoption rings. In January, a Chinese doctor received a suspended death sentence after her conviction for abducting and selling seven babies between November 2011 and July 2013. At least 26 other cases have been linked to this doctor, and several other people are also in criminal detention.

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Trafficking in Persons Report 2014 - US Department of State

www.state.gov/.../2014/?...Trafficking...

United States Department of State

The 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report is available in PDF and HTML formats. ... Environmental Degradation and Human Trafficking [ Get Acrobat Reader ...

Big Business in Babies #flipthescript #adoptionindustry

The Abduction of First Nations children

Big Business In Babies: Adoption, The Child Commodities Market

By Mirah Riben (25 April, 2007) Countercurrents.org

Adoption was once a process by which the community took responsibility for orphans. Increased access to birth control pills and legal abortion, and a lessening of the stigma of single parenting, coupled with an increase in infertility resulted in a demand for babies that outstrips the “supply.” And where there is demand – be it for diamonds, drugs, sex, or babies – corruption follows.

Adoption is racist. The scarcity of “white American-born babies” has led to an increase in international adoptions, fracturing family ties and heritage in what some are calling cultural genocide. Madonna was criticized. Angelina confounds. Westerners, however, continue to believe that adoption “rescues” orphans; though saving children from poverty, one at a time, does nothing to ameliorate the conditions that continue to produce them. And, many so-called orphans are in fact stolen, kidnapped, or their parents were coerced to relinquish them under false pretenses to be sold on the black and gray adoption markets with prices set by age, alleged health, skin color, gender and nationality.

As Americans import mostly light-skinned babies, non-white children are left behind, and the number of black, American-born babies adopted by overseas families has increased significantly in recent years, with black babies being placed with Canadian couples more than ever before. Adoption trends follow poverty and sociopolitical upheaval from Latin America to Asia and Eastern Europe. Since the 1990s, China and Russia have become the largest exporters of children for international adoption. Unrest and poverty in these nations makes them ripe for corruption and trafficking. 

In April 2007, the U.S. State Department confirmed that Guatemalan babies are kidnapped for adoption and other mothers pressured to sell their babies by corrupt, inadequately supervised notaries. The previous month, a Utah adoption agency was indicted for “systematically misleading birth parents in Samoa into signing away rights to their children while telling adoptive parents in the United States that the children had been abandoned and were orphans” (“Pacific Islands Report: Utah Agency Indicted In Samoa Adoption Scam,” March 5, 2007 http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2007/March/03-05-01.htm). 

All of this while UNICEF is investigating child trafficking and babies being sold for adoption in Nepal (Nepal: Unicef On Inter-Country Adoption http://peacejournalism.com/ReadArticle.asp?ArticleID=17655).


READ MORE here

Mirah Riben, author of shedding light on…the Dark Side of Adoption (1988) and The Stork Market: America’s Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry (www.AdvocatePublications.com, 2007); former director-at-large, America Adoption Congress. 

Becoming a Grandma again

baby me, adopted

By Trace (Lost Bird-Adoptee) 2014

A few days ago I became a grandma again. I cried quietly when I got to hold my precious new granddaughter, who has all her fingers and toes and hardly cried a peep.

As I was holding her, I imagined how lucky she is to have her whole family with her (both sides of her extended family were there.)

Then I imagined how I must have felt when my own mother Helen disappeared and was not there to hold me. Or nurse me. Or dress me. Or sing to me.

I was placed in an orphanage. I had two living parents, a huge extended family, yet they put ME in an orphanage. How can I ever thank you Catholic Charities for tearing me from my own flesh and blood and for doing this heinous thing called "stranger adoption" because my mother was unmarried, when my own father wanted to raise me?

I cannot imagine how traumatized I was when Helen never came to hold me. I just know it is blocked in my body somewhere, buried so so deep I cannot reach that primal pain.

For many infants handed to strangers, they experienced birth trauma, when shock takes over and your baby tears are actually screams.

Then we get a bit older and experience even more trauma.
Read this:  http://splitfeathers.blogspot.com/2010/11/four-traumas.html

There is so much joy in becoming a grandma. To imagine my grandchild being ripped away from our family and handed to strangers, it's not possible for me to imagine that.

It is impossible for me to imagine that happening to her.